DF Whiterock Session 39: Green Slime and the Wight Lady

Date:

2019-02-22

Weather:

Just below freezing, partly cloudy

Player Characters:

Garreth (Zuljita), Half-Orc Fighter, 327 points
Ibizaber (Demented Avenger), Human Thief, 324 points

Polly (Kalzazz), Wood Elf Archer, 308 points
Seépravir (Archon Shiva), High-Elf Wizard, 342 points

Significant NPCs:

Lady Chauntessa, innkeeper and historian

Ixnay, shoulder dragon

Vulgaris, Minyad druid

The Wight Lady, wight spellcaster

5 Wights

We started in Cillamar, on a not very cold winter day.  Seépravir tried playing her flute to make extra money that she didn't need, and failed miserably.  She also did some research on druidic portals, and found vague rumors about a place called the Far Garden, the essence of all forests, which is allegedly reachable via dimensional gates in some other forests.  There was no confirmation of known gates that actually work, though.  

Garreth returned from his quest to find a martial arts master, without actually meeting one but having heard rumors of a Master Naburu in Galaron.  He also found that his order of balanced sais had come in.

Zaber once again failed to find Lord Flitwick, but heard a rumor about summoning creatures being impossible near Castle Whiterock, and managed to order a potion belt.  Polly found that hard carrot juice was back on the menu, and shared some with Ixnay.  Zaber and Polly decided they needed some twine (for tracking invisible allies, because rope is heavy) and bought some at a bargain price.

Lady Chauntessa made an offer to purchase the huge lions-head mace the PCs had found in the black pyramid, but they decided not to sell it yet in case it turned out to be useful.

Seépravir cast Warmth on everyone, and they hiked to Castle Whiterock without difficulty, except that Seépravir slipped in the snow one time too many and decided to Levitate instead.  Once they reached the castle, she cast Dark Vision on everyone, Invisibility on Zaber and Polly, and Keen Hearing / See Secrets / See Invisible on Zaber.  Not to be outdone, Polly, who is technically a mage, cast Keen Vision on herself and Zaber.

The group decided to go looking for green slime for Vulgaris.  Garreth remembered that it was somewhere in the mine shafts of the lower orc level.  But none of the players remembered exactly where.  Garreth asked if Zaber or Seépravir, who had found the slime previously, could make an IQ roll to remember where it was.  Zaber rolled a 3, a maximum critical success, so I told him that he was sure he remembered exactly where it was.  Which is good because otherwise the PCs would have probably blundered around a cleared level for hours looking for it.  Even with Zaber giving exact directions, the other players had a hard enough time following him, but eventually he led them to the shaft with green slime dripping from the ceiling.  With his perfect memory of its location and magically enhanced vision, there wasn't much chance of him stumbling into it.

Seépravir cast Apportation on a vial, and then floated it up near the slime on the ceiling and tried to collect some.  It took her a few tries, but the failures didn't really matter because there were no PC fingers anywhere near the slime.  I asked for a DX roll to safely cap the vial, and Zaber and Garreth competed to be the one to heroically risk their fingers near slime.  Zaber, with slightly higher DX, eventually made the roll.  There was more slime left, so they repeated the whole process with a second vial.  Then there was hardly any slime left, so the group decided to leave it alone to possibly regrow, in case they needed more in the future.

While in the area, Seépravir decided to cast Seek Magic in case they missed any magic items on that level.  Instead it found that the walls of of the nearby tower where they had (long ago) defeated the cloud giant / orc Drugila were magical.  Seépravir then wanted to cast Analyze Magic, which revealed that the walls were enchanted with some unknown anti-digging spell.  Probably whatever the cloud giant wizards use to keep pesky earth mages out.  At this point everyone else was really bored and Garreth and Polly had started playing catch with sais, so they stopped playing with spells and headed out.

With two potion vials of green slime in Zaber's (borrowed) potion belt, the group went up one level to the top of the elevator, then Seépravir prepared to lower the elevator using the winch then Levitate down after it.  But she critically failed her Levitation spell, and for once decided not to use Luck to avert it.  The critical failure ended up casting the spell on the wrong target, which meant Polly was the one who could fly, which was actually fine, so they went with that.

The bottom of the elevator was right near Vulgaris's mushroom farm, so the group headed over there to trade green slime for access to the gate that was allegedly in her lair.  But they didn't have Elias with them, so they didn't actually want to go through the gate yet, just purchase future access.  Vulgaris agreed to the deal, and also mentioned that they might want to bring some construction equipment and possibly a dwarf since the gate is actually currently a pile of rocks.  Then she took her green slime and headed into her other cave to start making potions.

The group decided to try to finish the river level.  So, with Garreth rowing, they went north down the underground river.  They went through the rocks to avoid the giant clams, and this time no clams attacked them.  Zaber, who had been scouting ahead in the water, climbed back in the boat to go down a waterfall.  The group went past the illusory wall, past the landing that led to the passage to the giant cave with the pyramid, and then reached the end of the river.  There was a dry passage heading north, a small beach to the southwest with a pile of rocks beyond it, and a huge whirlpool sucking all the river water down.  Garreth landed the boat in the dry passage, which only went a few feet then ended in a huge pile of rocks.  It looked like the former path of the river, before it had been diverted down into the whirlpool.

Garreth announced that he wasn't taking the boat anywhere near that whirlpool, so instead Seépravir cast Flight on Zaber so he could fly over and check out the other beach.  He reported that there were a lot of rocks there and it would take forever to move them.  So Seépravir Levitated herself over there then started using Shape Earth to move rocks aside.  After a bit of this, a passage opened, but some creepy undead started coming through it.  So Seépravir re-closed the passage, then Zaber flew back over and carried first Polly, then Garreth across.  (Surprisingly, Zaber can actually lift Garreth at Extra Heavy encumbrance, which is good enough to fly at Move 2.)

When everyone was ready, Seépravir started manipulating rock again, with a goal of getting access to some undead for an unfair fight.  This worked, as one wight popped out while the other four were still behind the rocks.  Garreth, who had been Waiting for just such an occurrence, smashed the wight twice with a katana, re-killing it before anyone else got to help.

Seépravir started shaping the rock again, and this time managed to open a skinny tunnel leading to a trapped wight a few yards back, out of melee range.  This was Polly's cue to fill the defenseless wight with arrows until it stopped moving.  That took four arrows.  Seépravir played with the rock some more, but apparently all the other wights had moved back out of the smash zone, as when the passageway opened back up, three wights and the Wight Lady (a wight with long hair, a breastplate, some boots, a ring, and a flail) were standing well back in a cave, away from all the moving rock.

A slightly less unfair fight started.  Polly shot at the leader twice, but she dodged twice.  Garreth moved up.  The minion wights moved up.  The Wight Lady cast some kind of fear spell at both Garreth and Polly, the only two PCs she could see.  Garreth resisted, but Polly was terrified and decided to hide behind some rocks rather than fighting.  Seépravir Great Hasted herself.  Zaber considered running up to backstab the leader, but instead waiting next to Seépravir to get Great Hasted.

Garreth waited.  Three wights charged him.  When the first one got within katana range, he chopped it up, but it dodged.  Then it tried punching him, but he parried.  Garreth then chopped up another one and killed it.  The Wight Lady, seeing Garreth punishing her minions, yelled "Did she send you? She left me in this cave to die!" and then cast some totally unfair spell on him that melted his organs a bit for 4d damage, which turned out to be 13.  A decent amount, but he has over 20 HP, and he made his Major Wound knockdown / stun check, so his Bless decided it was not worth averting.

Seépravir decided she was tired of watch Polly cower, and cast Dispel Magic.  It worked, and Polly became less scared and started preparing to resume shooting things.  Meanwhile, Zaber invisibly ran up to the Wight Lady at double speed and tried stabbing her in the eye.  Somehow she heard him coming, and somehow she parried the blow with her flail despite him being invisible.  While Zaber complained, one of the surviving wights slammed Garreth.  But he parried, aggressively since its body wasn't a Striker like its hand, and he killed it.  Oops.  Mook wights are not the best tacticians.

The Wight Lady speecified "She makes me do her dirty work and then buries me alive in a cave! And then sends you...mongrels after me. DIE!", and then cast her unfair 4d damage spell again, this time on Zaber, but he doesn't have the kind of HP that Garreth does, and Zaber's Bless decided to expend itself saving him from going below 0 HP.  Garreth hit the Wight Lady hard with his katana, and she rolled a 17 on her death check, and that was the end of that.  The mages noticed that her breastplate, ring, flail, cloak, and boots were all magical, quite a haul if they were useful.

It was pretty late at that point, so the PCs decided to gather up their pile of loot and head back to Cillamar.  They had found some green slime, the end of the river, and a few magic items, not a bad day's work.

GM's Comments:

The green slime would have been a really annoying fetch quest, watching PCs stumble around through mine shafts,  if Zaber hadn't rolled that 3 to remember exactly where it was.  That short circuited things a bit, which was probably for the best.

The fight against the Wight Lady and her 5 minion wights might have been a big tougher if two of the wights hadn't died to earth moving tricks, or if the Wight Lady hadn't failed her very first death check.  Oh well.

Next time, the group has to choose between checking behind the illusory wall some more, going back to the pyramid, checking out other parts of the huge cave past the pyramid, or trying to play with the dimensional gate.  We'll see.